Landrovers and Black Label Beer

...and bush doctors and potholes

26  March 2000

This week’s dispatch is a long one. It comes in two instalments. If you get tired of such a long discussion of domestic fluff, just let me know and it’ll stop at once! Next week’s may be shorter, though. It all depends on what adventures the future holds in store for us...

Monday

Today has been an interesting day full of adventure. Actually, the adventure started late last night already when some youngsters came begging for help. They said they had two four-wheel drive vehicles stuck, and asked whether we could offer some assistance. So I went over to my dad’s home to drag him out (he was feeling a bit sick), and off we went, armed with shovels, jacks and cables.

When we got there, it immediately became apparent that nothing could be done until morning. It was a group of prefects who had been allowed some freedom to go on a holiday of their own making – without parents present. With cars and Carling Black Label beer, of course.

What they had done was almost beyond belief. They’d come down for the long weekend for some adventure on a neighbouring property. The grandmother of one of them had a very nicely customized Landrover, which they had managed to secure for the weekend. With this wonderful toy, they proceeded to explore the riverbed until it got stuck. (Yes, the same Landrover that got stuck last time, but this time with new kids driving.) It was hopelessly stuck. Right down to the axles in sand, and with shallow water flowing all round it. In trying to winch the car out, they had drained the battery until it couldn’t be started anymore. This brought into action phase two of their crazy adventure.

Apparently one of the boys had come down, driving his father’s Toyota Landcruiser station waggon. With this he headed down a very steep riverbank in order to try and jumpstart the stricken Landrover in the river. A route I wouldn’t have wanted to attempt, even in a much cheaper vehicle. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that the rains had turned the river banks into very slippery mud-slides! The cruiser went down over some rocks, which bent the steering gear, and then slid sideways. When it finally stopped, the boy at least had the sense to realize that if he moved any further, the vehicle would roll over. So it was at that point that their youthful bravado and spirit of adventure failed them and they came to call for help.

What made things worse, was the fact that our game warden had dropped by earlier that afternoon. He’d had enough of kids getting into trouble and then bothering him to help them out, so with a wicked twist of his dry humour, he told them something which got them all very anxious. He informed them that there had come reports that there were great floods in the mountains (it had been raining a lot again recently), and that flood-warnings had been issued. “Water had been ‘let-out’ further upstream” and should reach them in about an hour’s time! This must have scared them all half-silly. They started digging and heaving with much determination until they’d succeeded in embedding grandma’s Landrover so properly that all hope for extraction was lost. They later admitted that by this time they could just see their two very expensive vehicles being swept off into the Elephants River, and away to Mozambique. So we just smiled and said nothing about the fact that there were no large dams in that particular river, (which is merely a dry diver bed for most of the year anyway) and told them we’d be back in the morning. I thought they might as well do a bit of reflection as to the wisdom of their choice in adventure. Especially since by that time a good number of the fourteen in question, appeared to have given themselves over to the warm comfort of our country’s excellent wines and spirits. Perhaps it lifted their spirits somewhat, but I still suspect they must have had an uneasy night. Maybe not saying anything about the river was a touch cruel. But later events caused me not to regret this decision...

This is where the game warden told the boys the flood waters were coming from - up on the escarpment near Mariepskop where the Blyderriver Dam was.

Meanwhile, on the way home, we were stopped by three locals who asked us to call for an ambulance for one of their fellows who’d broken a rib and was very sick. We took them half-way home since it was on our way back and was already quite late with little light, owing to the cloudy skies. But when we tried to drop them off at the cross-roads, they refused to get off and walk home, like they normally would have. With the new lions and a couple of elephants that are now hanging around the area, they just couldn’t bring themselves to get off. We saw their point, and took them home. Only when they got off, the smell of native beer made me realize that they too, had been having a jolly weekend!

This morning the young party animals were still a bit groggy, and one-by-one they emerged sheepishly from the bush to come and find out what has to be done. The Landrover was still in the water and I noted that they’d written their class year and name on the hood of the car. This was so that they would be able to identify it later in Mozambique, one of them explained to me. The first step was to show them that a vehicle’s tyres should be deflated when attempting to drive on sand. – Always! Incredibly, none of them had known this. After a high-lift jack was applied, one-by-one the wheels were hoisted up out of the sand so that they could place rocks and planks beneath the wheels. After that, plus the installation of a borrowed battery, the Landrover came out easily enough.

But rescuing the Landcruiser was another matter. Anyone could see that it wouldn’t take much activity to make it roll over, and since the banks were steep, wooded and fairly slippery with silt, it would be a bit of a dangerous operation. Nobody feels like trying to help some bush-bashers rescue a car that doesn’t belong to them, and risk being sued for the price of a nice house, if it should roll over in the process. The doctor-neighbour and I managed to find the number of a big six-wheeler tow-truck in order to let them take the responsibility, but the boys had such a frightened expression at the thought of what this would cost, that we relented. They were told to dig away the bank above the Landcruiser, leaving only two pillars for the wheels to stand on. The idea was to reduce the angle at which the car was standing, so that its real axle could be dragged uphill without the car capsizing.

This took a fair amount of effort, and the boys got a bit dirty. But it was an adventure, and between pelting each other with hands full of clay, and retaliating by hurling foul language and insults back, they managed to dig away enough earth from above and below the car, using shovels and pitchforks. When finally the two remaining pillars beneath the wheels were removed, the big car slid nicely into a more reassuring angle. Luckily their newly-extracted Landrover had a very powerful mechanical winch with a long cable. So we nosed the Landy around, attached the cable to the Toyota’s tow-bar, began to haul in, and crossed fingers... The angels that no doubt work overtime looking after adventurous boys probably helped a bit, for the rear swung back nicely enough and nestled into the excavated depression. After a bit more shovelling the car eventually stood with its nose pointed at the river, and with a bit of effort, tugging and pushing, it finally made its way up the bank once more. As on the previous occasion, the kids showed their gratitude in terms that made sense to them: “Uncle, can we invite you for some breakfast with us? – And we think we’ve still have a little bit of brandy left.” (In South Africa, the terms ‘uncle’ is a term of endearment and respect, sometimes used in the place of “Mr” or “Sir.”) I could only laugh and protest that my age didn’t warrant my being called “uncle,” I already had breakfast, thank-you, and that since brandy is what got them into the mess in the first place, it would probably be best for them to avoid it for a while. So after their taking group pictures to add to their album of adventures, they cheerfully headed off and we went our separate ways.

Unfortunately they didn’t heed the advice about the brandy, and apparently they still had more than a “little bit” left. When the game warden got there later that morning, he found them, each with a glass full of “mix” – the local term for a mixture consisting of brandy and Coke in a 50-50 ratio! It seems that last night they stole some of our local signposts, and are pursuing their foolish definition of “fun” as merrily as before. So I guess there shall have to be some talks between us and their grandma in the near future... Let’s just see whether they survive their holiday first!

To be continued...

Back at the home front, the monitor lizards, Freddie and Sandra are now frequent guests. Yesterday the dogs got some marrow bones, which they would only growl about to each other, but not eat. So Freddy decided that if the dogs won’t have them, he would. He sat on the barbeque altar for a long time, chewing and trying to harass the marrow out of the bones. Sparkplug has not given up on trying to assassinate this intruder of his domain, but so far each of his different tactics have resulted in him being spanked very soundly indeed. He eventually did manage to drive Freddy off with one bone in his mouth, but I suppose the saga will continue yet.

Sparkplug and either Freddie or Sandra - looking for courage and asking for trouble...

My doctor-neighbour-friend has just been around for a sundowner. I always like talking to him, cause he’s got a sharp mind, he’s entertaining and always bears a load of interesting tales about his work as a doctor in a “bush-hospital.”

When our doctors qualify as physicians in South Africa, they are forced by a new law to do two years’ “community service” before they can be registered and practice on their own. Nobody likes this, but this is yet another one of those communist-ideas that was instituted by our government. (Cheap health-care for the masses). So my friend is in charge of the new “raw” doctors fresh from university. They are often sent to the far-flung rural state-owned “bush-hospitals” where mostly free healthcare is given to the illiterate masses. The conditions in these hospitals are usually “very challenging” as some doctors would put it in politically correct language. 

Anyway, one of my friend’s new doctors which he is in charge of, is one who got his medical degree from a particular university where medical degrees of questionable value are issued. Now, this particular young doctor has earned for himself, in the course of less than four months, the dubious title as “The doctor who kills more patients than he heals.” For this reason, everybody is afraid of him. It seems that he is still learning a lot... The fellow’s name is Joshua, [I changed his name]  and according to my friend, a new term has been coined at his hospital. When a patient dies as a result of physician’s error, they all say he has been “Joshuaed.” But this weekend a big sigh of relief went up at [name of hospital withheld] hospital when the poor Dr. Joshua X, got into a car accident and broke both his collar bone and his arm. Now he is out of action for a while, and the general feeling is that a few patients will now remain alive, who otherwise would have been dead. Incidentally, about the guy who broke his ribs... My neighbour went to check up on him, because the ambulance couldn’t come. He has tuberculosis as well (like most of the locals), which has gotten out of hand, because he doesn’t want to take his medication anymore (issued free by the government). He would receive free care and treatment at the hospital, but he vehemently refused to go there, saying “Ek sal vrek daar!” – I shall kick the bucket there! He obviously knows bush hospitals and what it is like to be “Joshuaed!”

A note of cynicism in this story? Undeniably. But this is just one of those things that happen in Africa, and which are talked about when people sit and watch the sun go down over a bronze-coloured Elephants river. These things just don’t amaze us much anymore. On the other hand, one of my friend’s good doctors had a very horrible experience last week. A woman had come to him to have him remove a growth from her ear, which was the result of an improperly pierced earlobe (for earrings). My friend refused to remove the growth, telling the woman that these things always grow back again. But she insisted. Finally, the only doctor willing to do the operation was this good young community-service doctor. He removed it OK, but in the process cut his hand through the glove. The woman didn’t look too bad, but her blood was tested anyway. She was HIV positive... The anxiety that that poor doctor will have to go through while he drinks AZT for a month can scarcely be imagined by those of us who haven’t been through it. Apparently AZT makes a person incredibly sick, and he has already been vomiting for a week. My friend himself, had to go through this once, and he says the word “hell” gets new meaning after a month of such uncertainty, waiting for the blood tests to either show positive or negative. And the worst of it all was that all of this happened for an operation which had not only been unnecessary, but not advisable as well!

One can only take one’s hat off for these brave “bush-doctors” who have to work for the smallest salaries under the worst conditions. One of his other young doctors has just gotten malaria, and his wife seems to have it as well. And since the senior surgeons (mostly from the Congo) draw salaries but rarely do any work, the work load is now very harsh on those doctors remaining in the harness. But they’re used to this by now. All in a day’s work.

With such working conditions, our doctors have to improvise a lot. My neighbour is just an ordinary general physician, but he has to do procedures which would ordinarily have been referred to specialists in any proper medical hospital. He just has to develop his own techniques mainly by trial-and-error. Luckily he likes making wooden stocks for guns and fixing engines and cars and making things, so he’s good with his hands. He just saws off bones, inserts screws and plates and clamps, and sews things up, and it seems to work. They have to improvise a lot, owing to the lack of proper tools, equipment and drugs, so these bush-doctors are generally very good. They also have to do simple eye-surgery, brain surgery, plastic surgery, and everything besides. Plenty of patching of gun- and knife wounds, and with Africa’s exploding population – hundreds of caesarean operations, because the locals generally have a genetic problem with delivering babies due to small pelvic bone passages.

It is no wonder that these bush-doctors are quickly snatched up by foreign countries as soon as they qualify. Their experience is usually very unique and far beyond their years or official training, because they have to handle very large numbers of patients and just have to solve most problems on their own. It is a pity, because we are losing large numbers of our best doctors this way. In the past, there was less money for health care than there is now, but all state hospitals used to be excellent. Now all are bad and when you get sick, you either go to a private hospital and pay through your nose, or stay at home.

One other thing which gave cause for comment was a patient that he had to treat for a bite-wound. This particular man had been bitten on his finger by his own wife. So deep that the cut reached the bone. He had to be put on intravenous antibiotics for five full days, while his finger swelled up like a Frankfurter sausage and became extremely painful. His finger finally had to scraped clean in a most gruesome little operation. The moral of the story? Human bite is extremely, EXTREMELY dangerous. Especially when you get bitten by someone who doesn’t believe in brushing teeth more than once every few days...

This makes me think of an incident we had on the farm, a solid number of years ago. Two of our workers got into a fight, which eventually degraded into a wild wrestling contest. It ended when one of them bit the other one’s nose off. He bit the entire front portion off so that only the two large nostrils remained. This man must be alive to this day. When you see him, you’ll recognise him instantly. He’s the one that bears an uncanny resemblance to Miss Piggy.

Tuesday morning

Found a waterbuck bull caught in a snare about two or three hundred metres above my home. It must have been caught last night, and the steel wire had cut deeply into the skin. I took some pictures, and the game guards were summoned to come and do a sweep, but the poachers will never be caught. It makes one extremely angry. They’re not poaching for hunger, but for sport. Hungry poachers check their snares every morning. They don’t leave the carcasses to rot in the snares, as the impala which we found only a short distance away from the waterbuck – also caught in a snare. This makes it so much worse. But our chief warden is a very good man. He wrote the anti-poaching manual for the Natal Parks Board, and enjoys hunting after poachers. One of these days he’ll probably make an example of one of them. The problem is that the poaching laws are so lax. Many poachers have been caught poaching elephants as many as three or five times already. In desperation some rangers have been know to have fed poachers to crocodiles in the past!

Friday

My teacher-uncle came for a visit. He had another interesting little story to tell about the ‘New South Africa’ – which is still held up a model for the triumph of democracy and justice before international eyes. In his town of Paulpietersburg – as in may other towns these days –the road surface has also degraded to something which South Africans had never known before. The town’s water supply system had been replaced some months ago, and the numerous ditches dug across all streets, were just filled in with dirt and left that way. With the rains, the already numerous potholes naturally just became bigger and even more numerous. Together with the terrible ditches, this has made a once pretty town quite an adventurous place to drive through! It was so bad, in fact, that when I was there last, a big fuel tanker had got stuck in an uncovered ditch just off the main street. It had sunk in so thoroughly that it was there for two days, and eventually had to be lifted out by a hugely expensive hired crane that had to be ordered from some faraway town or city...

Anyway, my uncle finally decided to let his school kids write letters of protest to the new town mayor, who is one of the typical ‘revolutionaries’ that now rides the gravy train. Most of them had clever little arguments, like: “The potholes are very dangerous. If a child should be riding his bicycle and suddenly has to swerve for a pothole, he could be hit by a car.” Or: “If a car should swerve, it could hit a pedestrian,” etc, etc. But one clever little fellow wrote more-or-less the following: “I want you to fix the potholes in our streets very quickly. I know what you do with our tax money! You steal it! You use it to buy booze for yourselves!” And then he went on to list the specific brand names in question.

The principal warned my uncle that there would be trouble, but he decided to send the letters to the mayor anyway. A day or two later, he was summoned to the principal’s office, only to find himself confronted by a highly irate town mayor. The mayor explained that he didn’t mind the other letters, but there was one which he found particularly offensive and unacceptable, and he very angrily demanded to know who had written it.

My uncle could hardly suppress a smile when he answered: “Your son!”

—   “Out of the mouth of babes . . . !” What followed was a long moment of silence, loaded with embarrassment and a lame: “Oh...”

We’ll see what happens to the potholes now... Regarding schools, my uncle thinks his school will only last three more years. The government has withdrawn all funding, except for some teacher’s salaries. The white kids are leaving the schools in droves, and are going for home-education. The black kids want to be where the white kids are, because discipline doesn’t exist in black schools and any attempt to instil it, is branded as racism. The whites don’t want to go to school with the blacks, because they feel that they blacks have morally unacceptable behaviour and bring crime, socialist-political indoctrination, destruction of culture, tradition, standards, Christian principles, etc., etc. Despite what everyone says, racial feelings are worse now than ever before in the country’s history. So education is a big mess here.

The potholes make me think of is supposed to have been like in Zaire, before it became the Congo, and also in parts of Zambia. There the local kids work as road-contractors. They fill in the potholes with soil, and when the truckers come past, they throw out hands of small change for the kids. It saves the government from fulfilling its responsibility, the kids make money, and the truckers get a road to drive on. Everyone wins. Of course, the rains always was the soil out again, but that’s the African definition of job creation. When the truckers stop throwing money, the kids stop their maintenance, and pretty soon the truckers start paying again. African logic... Pretty smart.

Incidentally, our biggest national trade union, the blatantly communistic COSATU, has warned the Government that if the state and the private sector don’t start creating thousands of new jobs really quickly, there would be really big trouble. This mighty trade-union is to a large extent the organization who determines who gets into government, so this is a dangerous threat. Their followers vote according to what the COSATU leaders tell them to vote for. The organization is enormously wealthy, and their leaders live in the greatest luxury and spend money like water. But they’re proud, and openly communists. They always wear red, and usually display the hammer and sickle with pride.

Speaking of communism, it seems our leaders have bestowed even more honours on Cuba. They’ve just signed an agreement for closer ties with Cuba and for “sharing information about the rest of the world.” So our closest national friends seem to be Fiedel Castro of Cuba, Mohammar el Quadafi [different forms of spelling] of Libya, and Yassar Arafat, that fanatic Arab. Oh, and also Saddam Hussein, the soft-spoken gent with the bad attitude. These national friends all give moral and ideological support, while the rest of the world is only there for soft loans. Phew! Some friends!

My uncle has been offered a job by one interesting black principle in a totally black school. A large new modern one.  This principal is one of the old boys. When his teachers strike, he chases them back to their classes with a long sjambuck (hippo-hide, used for disciplining cattle)! They’re all afraid of him, but his school is the only stable and successful black school in the area. When his teachers are late, he instructs the police to arrest them for theft – stealing the State’s time! But he is also a Zulu traditionalist, so he refuses to let any women speak at official meetings. He is very big, and when he shouts at any woman who dares to say a word in public: “You SHUT UP! You know nothing!” – they generally obey without objection! See why this Africa is such an interesting place to live in?

In my next life I’d like to be a Zulu. The men have only four duties in life: To make war or raid their neighbours, to plough the fields once a year, to occasionally work with cattle, and to fulfil their part of the matrimonial deal when it comes to procreation. They also have an interesting philosophy about women: Women are regarded in the same light as cattle. They are there to be bought, sold, traded, borrowed, hired out, and beaten at will. Women have virtually no rights, except maybe for the Fourth Amendment in Zulu law: “Women have the right to keep and bear children.” Preferably only female children, and as many as possible. This is because girls can be sold for cattle when they grow up. The father with many girls, is thus assured of a wealthy retirement.

So what happens when you want to marry? You talk to the potential bride’s father, and haggle – that’s what. You say she’s so bad and worthless and ugly, and you can only pay three cows for her, while the father says she’s so obedient and hard-working and faithful and brews such excellent sorghum beer that she’s worth twelve. And so you go on until the price has been settled. Then you pay a deposit and take her home. She’s yours to do as you please, until you’ve made all payments. Sometimes it takes years to pay for her, but this doesn’t matter too much. The nice thing is, that if you should become tired of her or she shows too much attitude or she just turns out to be less than what you thought she’d be, you’re always free to send her back for a refund. In that case she’ll probably get beaten by her father for having caused him financial loss, but other than that, there’s not much hard feelings. Any children are the father’s, but the mother has to raise them. Oh, and the other nice thing is that you can have as many wives as you can afford, provided you can pay for them. So what happens when you can’t pay for them but you want them anyway? You go and raid your neighbours and take what you like. Women, cattle, whatever. That’s the best bet for most young men. The only risk is that you might get killed in the process, but since both eventualities will end your quest for a wife, I suppose it is all the same...

So is this still going on in South Africa? To a surprising extent, yes, although it has been changing fast in these modern times. You can pay with money or cars or a house, or whatever, if you feel like it, but credit cards aren’t accepted as yet. I’ve also seen no wives for sale on the Internet, but I’m sure it’ll come... The problem is that women are becoming very liberally-minded under western influence, and this is leading to retirement in poverty for many fathers. This all sounds very funny, but in reality, this crashing of the ancient tribal systems is causing a lot of big problems for them and nobody really knows how to deal with it. The same goes for the land question, where tribal lands are owned by the chief, and he only allows those that he likes to live on his land. Now there are demands for private ownership of property, and the governments want to control that which the chiefs have been in control of for centuries... and so it goes. A big, big mess that has caused a lot of blood to flow over the last decade, and will probably take many years more to sort out.

Some mornings you wake up only to find that you’d missed a party. Yesterday morning was like that again. The sandbanks in front of the house has been absolutely littered with tracks of all kinds and descriptions. Sometimes herds of waterbuck like to sleep on the sandbanks next to the house. I think they feel safe next to a human habitation where they can see further. Especially when the flood lamps are left on at night. You can watch them from quite close-by, and they don’t mind noise and movement at all. Not at night, anyway. Somehow they must sense that there is no threat. Well, yesterday morning, it seems that the party must have been broken up rather rudely. Several sets of lion tracks and the deep imprints of antelope showed that lions had come to crash the party during the night. I couldn’t see that they’d caught anything, though.

The lions did give Joseph a scare, though. On his way to work, he suddenly saw the bush in front of him explode, and a whole herd of giraffe come flying out of the bush, their long legs flaying the earth with thunder. Although he is a child of the bush, this had come a little bit too suddenly for his nerves to handle, and he promptly took evasive action. And lucky thing he did, for a few moments later, the lions came tearing past him as they cashed after the giraffe. Joseph has now requested that he be fetched at home in a vehicle until such time as the lion-activity has subsided in this general area. Maybe this is a good thing, because those elephants are frequenting the area now.

So, I’ll stop before the week’s adventures grow any longer. Best regards and have a superb weekend!

Herman